we recently had a discussion in our game about the martial and masters arts feats.Does a Martial Artist necessarily have to inflict lethal damage, or can he decide to attack as if he didn't posses a forte. I realize there is a rule to convert damage with a -4 to attack, but it seems to us that it would be weird for a professional unarmed fighter to be unable to do less severe damage.

This is especially relevant with a bull rush attempt, were you can't take -4, since there is no attack roll.

The fact that the Martial Artist class can offer a trick that lets you change your unarmed damage to Subdual, at least implies that you can't convert without penalty (though someone could argue the trick is for Martial Artists using their Natural Attacks, and perhaps it is), but I've personally always allowed the conversion of unarmed damage to Subdual without penalty and never had an issue at all- others have said they allow players to deal the normal 1d3+STR subdual, like you lack the Forte or the (likely increased) damage granted by Martial Arts, but not a direct conversion.

On one hand - it's very hard to pull your punches outside of a calm sparring environment (and sometimes hard even then - I've sparred with a lot of guys who still hit really hard because of the difficulty of gauging how much of your power you're using). People also die in brawls because the person who killed them was trying to knock them out - humans are startlingly fragile. Beat Down somewhat supports this stance.

On the other - feats exist to give you more options, and in this instance the feat actually removes an option from your arsenal. Which is quirky. Several other chains let you change a weapons damage type by the second feat (Fencing, for example), not reduce types. The game itself is also highly cinematic, where most people don't die from an errant punch, and the players are highly capable. The game also doesn't possess a location injury system, so you can't target locations that will knock down or slightly paralyse your enemy without killing them. This side of the argument is fairly "gamist" in many ways, but then again, so is Fantasy Craft.

Personally, I rule the latter - characters can inflict either Subdual or Lethal damage with unarmed strikes at will. Flavour-wise, it represents their training giving them the ability to aim for specific locations on their target that have a higher chance of a knockout / death blow. Like Deral, I've had no real issues in game.

A untrained character does 1d3 subdual.A trained character does 1d4 lethal or 1d3 subdual.

Martial Arts and Master's Art don't effect this, they just add damage. So a character with Martial Arts can do 1d3+2 subdual or 1d4+2 lethal.

« Last Edit: September 12, 2012, 07:51:01 AM by Krensky »

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